Whose Story is it Anyway?

"'Shall we accept good from God and not trouble?'"

Job 2:10b

Christine’s post about Job last week reminded me of a post I started but never finished back in October. Thank you for the motivation to finish it, Christine!

We recently celebrated our daughter’s first birthday. It’s such a joy to look back over a child’s first year of life and see how much they’ve grown and changed, and we always marvel at how quickly the time seems to go. This year as we celebrated our daughter’s birth, we had several people in our life who were mourning the loss of a child. It reminded us of how truly blessed we are. It made us thankful for every sleepless night and for every other parenting challenge we face because it means our children are still with us.

It’s not always easy to understand why tragedies occur; in fact it’s rarely easy to even begin to understand why these things happen. An article I read keeps coming to mind as I ponder this, and I think it applies here. In our human nature, we see ourselves as the main character of God’s story. For example, when we look at the story of Job, it’s very easy to feel like he was treated pretty unfairly. But Job isn’t the main character in that story. God is. God is the main character of every story, including ours. When we look at life from that perspective, it most certainly doesn’t make tragedies easier to deal with, but we can begin to see that we are just a tiny part of a much bigger story.

Sometimes God has to use evil for good to make Himself known. Other times He uses our darkest and most difficult times to draw us closer to Him and to bring others into a saving faith. When Job stood firm in his faith, he proved to Satan that he wasn’t faithful simply because his life was good. He was faithful because God is good even when nothing else is. We have much to learn from Job’s story, as you can read here. Job lost everything, but he didn’t lose the one thing needful. We always have God’s promises to cling to, and as we approach the season of Lent where we reflect on the suffering and death of our Lord, Jesus Christ, we can rejoice in the kept promise of His resurrection and victory over sin, death, and the devil. No matter what we face here on earth, we can find comfort knowing that God is the main character in this story, and we know the ending; the victory has already been won!

Jesus, It seems strange to thank you for the struggles that we face in our earthly life, but we are thankful that you can use us in this way to help tell Your story. We thank you most of all for taking all of our sins and burdens upon Yourself and carrying them to the cross in our place. Give us the faith of your servant, Job, in our times of trial, and help us to hold fast to the promises of Your Word. Amen.